


A Brush With Death

by 17angelsprings



Series: Angel's Attack on Stardew Valley AU [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Author tries and fails to up their profanity game, Blood and Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Hange Zoë, Injury Recovery, Married Couple, Monsters, Near Death, Stardew Valley AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24547546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17angelsprings/pseuds/17angelsprings
Summary: Over-confidence fails Levi in the most dangerous way possible when he takes a trip into the Mines.Setting: Winter, Year 4Inspired by the piece "Mines (Cloth)" from the Stardew Valley OST.
Relationships: Hange Zoë/Levi
Series: Angel's Attack on Stardew Valley AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1771300
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a suggestion: Read or re-read this chapter while listening to or imagining that "Mines (Cloth)" is playing. You'll either thank me or hate me later. 
> 
> Yeah, I know I'm taking a huge-ass jump in time but for this series, I feel like writing the events in whatever order I want. 
> 
> Have a good read, fellas!

_ The worst things tend to happen when you really least expect it, huh?  _

Out of the corner of his somewhat blood-obscured eye, Levi could see part of the halo of the flickering yellow light on the wall next to him. There were enough other lights on other walls to illuminate everything in his immediate surroundings but it didn’t make his situation any less depressing. Besides the lights, all he could see were the depressingly icy-blue stones or whatever the fuck they were densely packed together as the ceiling looking down at him. It didn’t help that the place was feeling so fucking cold, too. He involuntarily shivered, feeling the blood that had left him chilling and soiling his body even more. 

Why did he even come down into the Mines? The answer swirled around in his head but couldn't form itself into coherent thoughts. He closed his eyes, thinking that maybe he could think properly if he didn’t have that damned ceiling and those damned lights distracting him. As the blackness took over his vision, he tried to slow down and steady his erratic breathing. He couldn’t be in any immediate danger at that moment because he cleared the floor of all the creatures that inhabited it. Well, almost all of them. There was still a skeleton roaming around that would throw the bone to land the finishing shot as soon as it saw him. It moved very slowly based on what vibrations he could pick up from the ground. At times the movements came away from him and at others, they came towards him. Levi turned his head to the side and peered out of the opening between the rocks and crystals he hid behind. In the distance, that skeleton seemed to be nowhere near him at that moment but something else immediately caught his attention: a glimmering purple star-shaped object with a hole in the middle and two emerald green leaves sticking out from the top. 

Right. He came into the Mines to look for a Stardrop. He wanted to reach out to clutch it but his hands had to stay right on the blood-stained backpack he was pressing against his body. Plus it would’ve been a shame if the blood that was so filthily covering him ruined the pristine fruit right next to him. He couldn’t let his beloved wife, his dear Hange, eat that. 

Speaking of which, he wondered how much time had passed since he first left the farm that evening. Had he been gone so long that she was worried something happened to him? Or was she fast asleep, convinced that he would come home as soon as he was ready to? Levi told Hange that he was going out to get more iron ore since they had gone through tons of it without restocking it. While what he told her was undoubtedly true, his main goal was obtaining another one of the mysterious purple fruits that gave her the most empowering experience of her life.

When it came to marriage, everyone in Stardew Valley knew that when one was sure that they wanted to spend their life with someone, they gave that someone a mermaid’s pendant. If that someone accepted, then the lovers are engaged and would soon have a wedding. While the one who received the pendant would wear it with pride, telling the whole world that their heart belonged to someone without even saying a word, the one who gave it would usually receive something else in return. The Stardrop was a physical object just like the pendant. It was a firm fruit that had no expiration date. And its hole in the middle made it possible to put a string through it so it could be worn as a necklace, too. Not that those who managed to get a hold of a Stardrop would ever expect their gift to be used that way, Levi being without exception. Instead, anyone who was lucky enough to receive one would often consume it like any other kind of food. By eating it, they were accepting the kind and loving message behind the gift: “Your desires are my own because I love you. I want you to live to be healthy and strong and to be able to achieve those desires.”

He was no stranger to the known benefits surrounding that fruit. It was said that those who ate it had more energy for the rest of their lives. He once considered taking those benefits himself back when his first Stardrop lived in his refrigerator inside his former house. However, he could never bring himself to eat it. He didn’t know why. He didn’t think he was going to ever find himself falling in love and getting married at the time. Levi just had a feeling that the fruit wasn’t for him. 

Looking back, the gravity of fate must have compelled him to hold onto it. He rarely engaged in any of the spiritual or religious shit, but he had always loved (and at the same time hated) the idea that everything had a path to go through and that they were always walking on it even when they didn’t know their destination. When he was feeling in-control, he wouldn’t have wanted to give it up for the world. Fate was something uncomfortable to think about. When he was feeling despondent and hopeless, he secretly prayed that some force above his capabilities and understanding would take it all over for him. A predetermined path was something that felt more or less comfortable to him. 

With each pulsating flicker from the wall-lights, his regrets grew. Coming down into the Mines, he really expected to complete his objects and exit without a lot of damage. What a foolish belief. He shouldn’t have come down at all as unprepared as he was. Inside his dirtied pack was his own dagger and pickaxe, neither of which were as strong or effective as Hange’s personal tools that she spent years collecting and upgrading, and empty paper bags for the food he carried for the journey. When she offered to let him use her Galaxy Sword, he didn’t take it, citing that he had always come out alive and relatively bruiseless from the Mines with just the weapon he had known for even longer than his wife. It wasn’t that he was afraid of losing the sword because he rarely lost anything due to immense care in keeping things within his reach. He was just overconfident and didn’t anticipate that things would go so terribly wrong. 

Levi started his iron-collecting routine like any other: He took the elevator down to the 40th floor, cleared the area of all the iron-ore possible, fought off any monsters who came near him, located the ladder to the next floor, and the cycle repeated. Along the way, he searched for any sign of a Stardrop. After nearly twenty floors of picking away at rocks and defending himself, he spotted the object of his main objective encased in a frosty slime. After a long battle of knocking the slime back into a wall, he stabbed over and over again at the speed of lightning, eventually killing it and letting the fruit reveal itself when the creature’s death caused its gooey body to fall apart. As soon as he grasped the fruit, he felt something take a hard landing on the back of his head, nearly knocking his head into the wall in front of him. He turned around to see two skeletons heading directly for him. Each one had glowing red eyes on an otherwise expressionless and soulless face. They marched on quietly, rattling bones and footsteps being the only sounds they made. Levi revealed his dagger and immediately rushed into one skeleton, stabbing it to death as quickly as he could. Meanwhile, the other skeleton dismantled one of its ribs. Just as he managed to turn his target into nothing more than just a calcium-dense pile, its partner struck him on the right side of his face, causing him to fly back into a pile of crystals, shattering them, creating more wounds on his back and legs. 

As he got up, he felt as though his legs would give out if he tried to fight anymore. Seeing that the skeleton in front of him was already prepared to throw another bone at him, he grabbed the Stardrop he dropped on the floor while knocked back and rounded a corner. As he ran to the other side of the floor, he heard the object meant to kill him crash against the wall, effectively snapping it into two. Levi internally winced, not even wanting to imagine how based his head would’ve been had it crashed into him instead. He rounded another corner, relieved to find it void of anything other than rocks and crystals, especially a large gathering of them that could easily obscure him from view if he literally laid low. Feeling his limbs become weaker by the second, he lowered himself and crawled in-between the gaps. He didn’t hear the rattling sound approach him, much to his solace as well as his anxiety. He had better hope that fucking skeleton stayed right where it damn was and not hiding somewhere waiting to ambush him. After appearing next to a wall, he stripped himself of his backpack, dropping the fruit onto the ground next to him, and flipped over on his back. As the rocks pressed on the cuts on his back, he pressed the pack on the front, covering up the wounds he received on earlier floors that he didn’t care about until at that moment. 

And that was how he ended up as he did. 

He continued staring at the Stardrop, the object of his troubles. All he had wanted was to show Hange his love towards her once more. Mere words nor even the rarest gems in the world could communicate what the fruit could. Well, in all honesty, maybe not even the fruit could do it since nothing he ever did for her felt enough for him. In fact, just by being where he was, he felt everything he ever built up with her was coming undone. Levi made a selfish mistake, he realized. The whole time, he had been focused on thanking her for showing him throughout all the time they had been together what actually mattered, he lost sight of something really important: that she felt exactly the same towards him. Not once before coming to the Mines did he consider how she would feel if she woke up the next morning to find her bed cold and empty, how despondent she would feel if she realized her partner-in-crime would be gone forever, and how much more strength she would need to muster in order to continue tending her farm like she always did on top of raising their kid herself. 

Suddenly Levi heard footfall coming from the corridor he escaped from. His body tensed for a moment, adrenaline pumping into him to prepare for a fight should he have been spotted. However, noticing that the beat of each step was much quicker compared to the skeleton’s march, he relaxed a little. After no more than a few more seconds of careful listening, he knew exactly whose rhythm it was. It wasn’t something he couldn’t recognize, not after all those years of seeing her run practically everywhere when she wasn’t on her horse. As the sounds got closer, he summoned whatever strength he had to make sure he was seen. First, he lifted his fingers successfully. Then he managed to get one hand off of his body, too. Confident that all he had to do was take it slow, he tried raising the arm attached to the hand, but that task was lengths more difficult than he anticipated. Even with the ground as support for his elbow, his palm and fingers shook uncontrollably, begging to be lowered, until finally, they crashed onto the icy-cold and rocky floor with a thud. 

The footsteps continued approaching him, slowing down in pace once they got really close, and stopped completely next to him. At some fucking amazing timing, his vision started turning black and every noise around him decreased in volume. The last thing he heard was a very distressed “Levi!” from a voice he could recognize anywhere.

The last thing he ever sensed was the feeling of his cheek being cupped in a warm and gentle hand along with the sudden presence of an object in his mouth. Without thinking, he chewed and swallowed it, finding it to taste strongly of green tea.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to "Winter (The Wind Can Be Still) while writing this chapter.

He could’ve sworn he was dying in the Mines just a moment ago, spending his very last moments with the one he loved and tasting his favorite thing in the whole world. Instead, he was back home, pouring freshly-boiled water into his white mug. Once he filled it nearly to the brim, Levi picked up his mug by the rim and gazed at the greenish-golden liquid with green tea leaves at the bottom. His nose caught a whiff of the strong earthy aroma that felt just in place at the farm and in the valley as a whole, where acres and acres of nature surrounded them. Before the tea could cool down any more than it did, he brought it to his lips and carefully sipped on it. He resonated with the pleasantly bitter taste, a smile tempting to curve on his otherwise normally stoic expression. As he took more sips, an older memory of Hange telling him that if we were tea, he’d be green tea, slowly came back to him. And the more of the tea he drank, the more he realized that she was right. That was probably why he liked that variation the most. 

Soon enough, he drank it all. Levi quickly ran his cup under the faucet and neatly set it down next to his wife’s red one, which was covered in water droplets but lacked any remnants of coffee on the inside. His feet transitioned from walking on the gray-and-white tiles to the nutmeg wooden floor and then from level ground to the stairs. Once he arrived at the top, he turned right to be met with a warm-brown door. He turned the muted-gold knob and stepped inside. The room was mostly empty aside from a small shelf, a box of books, and a crib protecting his sleeping one-year-old daughter Naomi. Not wanting to wake her up, he walked out quietly and closed the door behind him softly. 

He walked back down the stairs, gazing at the wintery scene outside the window by the front door. The snowflakes fell onto the ever piling snowy ground in a nearly perfect vertical line. After stepping onto the wooden floor again, he grabbed his gardening gloves from a nearby table and slipped them on along. Even in winter, there were still crops to attend to since Hange kept quite a few of them in the greenhouse she got fixed years ago. Ever since he moved with her when they got engaged, they agreed to have him go to the greenhouse every morning to check on the plants while she went to the barn and chicken coop to tend to the animals and harvest their products. Before walking out of the front door for his daily task, he picked up his water can from underneath the coat rack then he picked his smoke-gray scarf off of a hook and wrapped it around his neck. 

Once he was met with cold air and snow settling in his black locks, he had never felt more comfortably uncomfortable in his entire life. Before, when he thought life would be over for him, he was ready to reach out to anything warm just to taste even the slightest bit of pleasure of living life once more. Not that he was taking that for granted, but with his life intact, he supposed that since even the farthest source of heat was never too far from him, he could leave it for a bit and trudge on to do what he needed to do. Although walking through cold was no longer a mere obstacle that held his well-deserved warmth on the other side. Winter had never been his favorite season for several reasons, but he’d been able to enjoy it more in recent years. Seeing the endless acres of snow on the ground and skies constantly speckled with white no longer reminded him of permeating loneliness and melancholy that he thought would follow him around forever. In place of those feelings, the frosty landscape evoked appreciation for nature’s ability to turn a colorful and complicated scene into something of simpler and more consistent beauty. In addition, having lived at the farm for a long while, he saw the wonders the melting snow did to the land. When spring would come around again, the small family would be met with fresh and pristine soil to plant new crops on. 

Without a sense of urgency, Levi made his walk to the greenhouse. Along the way, he heard footsteps and panting and he turned around to see Hange’s large black and brown dog, Horace, trotting up to him. His neutral expression didn’t change but in truth, he was happy to not be alone even for the short journey. He heard the expression “pets look like their owners” time and time again and seeing her dog energetically walking alongside him gave him the feeling that his wife was sending some sort of extension of her. It was a comforting feeling and he supposed she felt the same whenever she looked at his cat. 

He opened the sliding door to the greenhouse and the dog rushed inside. He let out a “Tch” but didn’t call him back outside, knowing that he could be trusted with not messing up the plants. As Horace sat on the wooden edge of the large and square-shaped soil plot, panting and eagerly watching his co-owner walk around the perimeter, Levi took careful mental notes of the state of each leaf and stalk he passed by. Finding that there were fresh water droplets from the sprinklers on each plant, he felt reassured that the water-spraying devices were doing their jobs as per usual. 

He made his way towards the door and Horace got up and ran towards it as well. Just as he was about to reach out to let them, Levi caught his mirrored self on the glass in front of him. His eyesight was nowhere near as bad as his wife’s, yet all that was laid out was an unclear shape that had his colors. The more he looked at it, the worst it got. All of his features were twisted out of shape. He even saw some strange line that was running down what was supposed to be his right eye and intersecting his mouth.

For sure, something wasn’t right. Just what the hell had he been doing? Was this all a dream? 

As if he was answering his own question, everything disappeared too fast for the eye to see and was replaced by darkness and the feeling that his eyelids were shut. He slowly fluttered them open, gradually adjusting to the brightness that he realized was the light coming from the window behind him, which was rather unusual for his mornings. Once he drank in his surroundings, he realized that he wasn’t even home but the setting looked familiar to him nonetheless. He looked to his right and about half of a face came in from between the green room dividers. The person who possessed that face took a left turn and sat on a blue stool next to him and that was when it clicked with Levi.

“Hey, are you awake?” 

He tried and failed to sit up, groaning when his head fell back on the pillow. 

“Hey, Levi. Take it easy,” advised the man sitting on the stool and leaning slightly leaning over the bed, gray eyes wide with concern yet relief at the same time. “You’re in my old man’s clinic in case you couldn’t tell already.” 

He knew where he was all right, eyebrows furrowing in slight irritation. Even though Eren had matured quite a bit in personality, he was and would always be more or less a brat in Levi’s eyes. He opened his mouth to shoot one of his typical insults at the young man, but no sound came out. So he closed it and trailed his eyes towards the ceiling. Once he felt he had enough energy to speak, he opened his mouth again, still not looking at the younger man. “How long had I been out?”

“Since last night,” replied Eren. Then he got up and stood between the dividers, a hand planted on one and the other forming a half-cup around his mouth. “Hey, Pops! Levi’s awake!” 

The bedridden man’s head throbbed with the sudden loudness occupying the otherwise quiet room. “Oi, you shitty brat! Don’t shout like that when I’m right here!,” he snapped, his volume level barely above normal speaking level but his tone seethed with vexation. 

“Sorry,” the other mumbled with an awkwardly apologetic smile written across his features. 

Soon enough, after hearing footsteps come closer and closer to the dividers, he observed the tall and composed middle-aged man who owned those steps, Dr. Grisha Yeager, walk in between them. He had a warm smile on his bearded face that he remembered from every yearly appointment he ever went to since coming into town. He traded places with his son on the stool, leaning in towards Levi and tugging on one of the temples of his glasses further back on his ear. As if confirming that his patient was indeed awake, the doctor let out a hum of satisfaction. “It’s good to see that you’ve woken up.” The man in the bed stayed still on the bed, feeling too weak and constricted by the bandages sticking to his face and neck to nod a response. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“That’s to be expected. Are you in any pain?”

“Not really.”

“Excellent! That’s a good sign for a quick recovery then.” Like he was emphasizing his point, Dr. Yeager tugged on the other temple and flashed an even wider smile. “If everything goes smoothly, then I can let you go as early as this afternoon.”

Tired as he was and not interested enough to contribute anything of length to the conversation, he hummed a quiet and affirming “Mmn” before letting his eyes gradually close. The two other men quietly walked away from him. 

Content with not falling asleep and simply having a break from the light, his immediate thoughts detached from the events he just experienced in the mundane world. They swam in a pool of void space, making him aware of the rise and fall of his breath and the stillness his body was complacently subjected to. Then they halted all movement and let themselves sink. Along the way, concrete and somewhat coherently-formed ideas wormed their way into his attention, filling up the void and entertaining enough to keep around. 

The first emotion he felt other than fatigue was the relief of knowing how happy Hange would be to see him alive and as well as he could be. He couldn’t be any gladder that whoever was in charge of everything that allowed existence to be possible wouldn’t torture her like that by taking him away. Maybe it was Yoba. Maybe it was some other force beyond his understanding. Or maybe it was himself. Before he could start an internal debate about which one it was, his thoughts jumped onto the cloud of remorse. 

Although the worst of the worst was over, guilty thoughts started to expand inside Levi. Their gaseous quality made it easy for them to occupy everything while not being nearly as overwhelming as before. He caused her to worry for him. He caused her to traverse the valley late at night, looking for him. All because of a fucking Stardrop. 

What even happened to it? While the state of the fruit was nowhere near as important as that of his own well-being, he couldn’t help but put aside his worries and indulge his curiosity. Maybe the bats devoured it down to the very last seed. It was also possible that Hange managed to snatch it so at least it made it to its goal safely. 

Then he clicked his tongue. Suddenly, he recalled the green-tea flavor he recently experienced. 

Before he could finish his trail of thought, Levi heard a “He’s conscious” in the distance, followed by a rush of footsteps. As soon as he bothered to open his eyes, he saw the face of the person he was just thinking about along with their baby secured in her arms and a large cloth bag hanging from one of her wrists. Until she made it to the stool and turned to face him, Hange’s body emanated a nervous aura. It dissipated upon seeing his open gray eye. She smiled with relief, a tear streaming down the one eye that wasn’t covered by an eyepatch. 

In spite of himself, he quickly pushed his forearms down on the mattress so he could sit up. “Hange,” he started, her name coming out like a croak. “I’m sorry,” he continued, his voice only feeling more packed with guilt. 

Holding Naomi closely to her torso, the woman next to him lunged her hand out and gently placed it on his chest, smiling even wider but the tears continuing to flow. “Don’t,” she chided. “Just be more careful from now on.”

Feeling his wife start tapping her fingers on him, he slipped one hand from under the sheets and laid it on top of her’s. “Of course” was his response before she interlaced her digits with his, disregarding the fact that he was missing two of them on his own hand. 

“Is everything okay?” questioned Dr. Yeager as he walked into the patient area once more. Levi nodded in response and Hange kept her affirming smile in place. “Excellent. I’ll be back in a bit to change your dressings,” he added before walking out again. 

She released her hand from his and it went into the bag to pull out a metal thermos. She looked at him questioningly before he held his hand out and nodded at her. Once she handed him the container, he unscrewed the lid and made no haste to bring it to his lips, putting a confused expression on Hange’s face. Nevertheless, he sipped the tea and at least some of it made it through his bandages. As he prepared to take another, she asked “So what did the Stardrop taste like?” with curious eyes. 

Levi’s mind halted for a moment. It was his turn to make a confused face although it would’ve been hard to communicate it given how much of it was covered up. His free eye darted back and forth from the hot liquid inside the thermos to her. She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off with an “It reminds me an awful lot of this tea.”

Hange giggled in amusement and he smiled underneath his wrappings, relishing in the thought of living another day and undoubtedly many more with his family. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and this fic as a whole! 
> 
> This AU is really fun to entertain and I'd like to make more material for it, but given how quickly my brain jumps around different ideas and how I haven't played SV in quite a bit, I'll be stepping back from writing fics for it for the time being. However, I don't mind and in fact, I'd love to hear any further ideas you might want to see from this AU : >

**Author's Note:**

> So if you've made it this far, congrats! I hoped you liked your read and I got another chapter planned ahead : D


End file.
